


A Different Kind of Love

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Asexual Parker (Leverage), Autism Spectrum, Clueless Eliot Spencer, Developing Relationship, Flirting, Kidnapping, Multi, Mutual Pining, Pining, Relationship Negotiation, Requited Unrequited Love, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 10:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13785564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: Eliot has been fighting his feelings for Parker and Hardison for a long time and he has a really good list of reasons why the relationship he wants can't work.  When Hardison is kidnapped and Parker goes off the rails worrying about him, Eliot begins to suspect that in the end none of his reasons matter as much as his love for hacker and thief.





	A Different Kind of Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venilia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venilia/gifts).



> I appreciate your patience more than I can say. I obviously went with several of your prompts - I hope I did them justice! Thank you for playing with us in this year's Exchange, and I hope we see you next year!
> 
> Note to readers: while I am writing Parker as being on the spectrum and do make references to self-soothing behavior, I do not claim to be an expert and am not trying to pigeonhole her as any particular diagnosis.

It wasn’t supposed to happen. The bad guys weren’t even supposed to know Hardison existed, much less how to get to him or how important he was.

 _And yet…_ Eliot scrubbed a hand across his face, and wondered if he dared risk catching a few hours of sleep. Now that the doctors had assured them the hacker was going to be all right, Parker was finally beginning to settle. If he could trust that the hospital staff would give her the wide berth she needed right now, he would have a chance at starting to replenish his depleted reserves.

 _”Keep them safe.”_ He didn’t begrudge Sophie the charge she’d laid on him all those months ago. She had only been giving voice to a responsibility he’d already freely assumed.

The problem with taking on that kind of responsibility was that despite his best intentions and considerable skill, sometimes things went wrong. Things like a white van pulling up next to Hardison on the sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon in front of his favorite local gaming store and three thugs in black sweaters and ski masks jumping out and grabbing him.

God, just recalling the details made Eliot cringe. It was like the beginning of a damn Law & Order episode, except because it was so ridiculously cliched it had actually worked. And because it was a normal afternoon on a normal day, he hadn’t been wearing his earbud.

And because it was Hardison, they’d been left without any way to effectively track him. Eliot had done what he could in those first twenty-four hours, but he was still fairly computer illiterate when it came to work like this, and Parker was decompensating fast. The unspoken rule among the team had always been where Parker was concerned that you didn’t bring up her differences unless she mentioned it first, so Eliot had never learned what, precisely, the thief did to self-soothe when the stress and chaos got to be too much for her to handle.

When she showed up to breakfast on day three with palms that had been scraped raw from being slapped repeatedly against a concrete wall, he called for help. Not Nate and Sophie – Parker flatly refused to interrupt their honeymoon ‘unless we don’t have a choice’ – but even without their help Eliot managed to assemble a fairly impressive array of legal and not-so-legal talent to throw at the problem.

By sunset on Friday of that same week, the kidnappers were in federal custody, and Hardison was in the hospital. Nothing serious or life threatening – dehydration, a sprained wrist from a badly thrown punch at one of his captors, bruises, cuts, and the lingering effects of a concussion – but collectively bad enough to earn him a few days stay in the hospital. He didn’t want to be there, and he’d almost won Parker over to his cause, but Eliot had stood firm. “I don’t care how incompetent those idiots turned out to be – we are not risking your health on the possibility one of them got in a lucky shot.” Put so bluntly, it allowed Parker to go with her head and not her gut and stand by him.

They did have a tense moment out of the gate, where the charge nurse tried to stop the thief from making a nest for herself in the room’s unoccupied bed but drawing on resources he was pretty sure would have made Sophie herself sit up and take notice, Eliot managed to charm his way into a resolution between the two women. _And only had to return Helen’s wallet twice._

It was approaching midnight as Eliot shuffled back down the hall towards Hardison’s room. The few nurses and orderlies he passed that he recognized nodded back at him. One of the LPN’s – a young man named Craig, grinned at him as Eliot tried – and failed – to hold back a yawn.

Hardison’s room was darker than when he’d left it earlier; the only light a spot over the hacker’s bed. “You’re not supposed to be working,” Eliot chided him, seeing the tablet in the younger man’s hands.

Hardison glanced up at him, raising an eyebrow. “Do you know how many emails I get in a day? Five days, we’re approaching my inbox going up in a mushroom cloud!” His voice was pitched low, and Eliot scanned the room – instinctively seeking out Parker’s location. She was curled up in her nest, a pillow hugged to her body.

“She dropped off about twenty minutes ago,” Hardison said. “You really should take her home.” He paused. “You should really take me home, but I get it.”

Crossing the room, Eliot took the chair on the far side of Hardison’s bed. Reaching out, he plucked the tablet from the hacker’s hands and set it to one side. “More you behave, the faster you get out of here. Trust me – I’m an expert in hospitals.”

Hardison laughed softly, and Eliot felt a small, warm glow of satisfaction in his chest at seeing how easily the younger man could laugh after what he’d been through. He valued that, he realized suddenly. After everything they’d seen and been through, Hardison hadn’t let it harden him, make him cynical.

“You’re an expert in being a lousy patient,” Hardison countered. “Don’t think I don’t know what you would have done if Nate and Sophie hadn’t been practically sitting on you the whole time you were recovering.” His grin widened. “Every time.”

Refusing to rise to the bait, even though he didn’t have anything even approaching a credible argument, Eliot hitched one shoulder negligently. “So think of me as Nate.”

He thought at first that it was a trick of the light that gave Hardison’s skin a slightest reddish tinge, but then he realized that the hacker was blushing. “Not in this life or any other,” was all he said, though.

The two of them talked for a while about everything and nothing, until Eliot couldn’t hold back a head-splitting yawn. “Hey, why don’t you crawl in with Parker for a bit?” Hardison asked. “I’d invite you in here, but…” His voice trailed off, leaving Eliot wondering if he was hallucinating, or if the offer really was as flirtatious as his tired brain was suddenly making it seem?

He glance across at Parker, still asleep in the other bed. “I don’t want to disturb her,” he admitted. “She’s been all over the place with you gone.”

Hardison had sobered. “I saw her hands. I take it you guys have never talked about her…coping mechanisms?”

“You know what Nate always said.” Eliot gestured helplessly. “I’m not even entirely sure what her deal is, although I’m guessing it has something to do with her being on the autism spectrum?”

“Based on what I’ve seen and read, you’re probably right,” Hardison acknowledged. “Problem is, if she was tested growing up nobody ever told her the results, and now that she finally feels like she’s a part of something she doesn’t want to risk it by poking at old issues.”

Which pretty much guaranteed Eliot would get nowhere by asking Parker directly. “You know about her coping mechanisms, though?” he asked, finally. “I’m not trying to pry or make her talk about something she doesn’t want to, but man – I can’t just stand by and let her hurt herself if there’s something I can do to stop it.”

Hardison was quiet for a long moment. “If you’re going to try and hold her when you’re in bed with her, around the waist only. Don’t pin her arms, hands or legs.”

Realizing that it was the best way for him to get at least some sleep, Eliot asked, “What about skin-to-skin contact?”

“As long as it’s not sexual, it won’t bother her. Remember, she doesn’t have the same kind of nudity taboos we do.”

 _And if that isn’t the understatement of the night,_ Eliot thought, pushing to his feet with a groan.  
*******************************************  
_”Sophie calls it heart-blindness,”_ Parker had said the last time the subject of Eliot had come up between them. _”He wants to be with us – really with us – but he’s decided that it can’t happen so he doesn’t see it’s already happening.”_

Hardison hadn’t had the guts to ask if she’d talked about this specific relationship issue with Sophie, or if Parker was just extrapolating from another conversation she’d had with the grifter. Regardless – even gone from their daily lives, Sophie was still everyone’s go-to authority on emotional things.

It didn’t take long for Eliot to settle down in the other bed. Hardison noted that he was very precise as he moved in around Parker – holding her exactly as Hardison had suggested. The hacker felt his chest tighten as the urge to join them rose inside his heart. _We can’t keep going on like this._ The imaginary dividing line Eliot insisted on keeping between them was starting to cause real damage.

 _”He doesn’t want to know about that stuff,”_ Parker had told him when Hardison confronted her about the damage to her hands. _”And I don’t like how he looks at me when he sees how my brain really works.”_

 _That’s just because he doesn’t think he has the right to ask._ And round and round and round they went.

His attempt to go back to sorting his email was thwarted by a visit from his nurse. Hardison submitted to the regular check of his vitals without complaint, watched them change his IV bag and took his medicine. _The more you behave, the faster you get to go home._ By the time he was alone again, Parker was awake and had slipped free of Eliot’s arms.

“They like what they see?” she asked, kissing him on the forehead.

He shrugged, smiling at her touch. “You know how hospital types are. They’re not going to commit to anything unless a doctor signs off.” He glanced up at her. “How about you? Everything working like it’s supposed to?”

She paused, considering the question. “Seems like,” she said, nodding. “How’d you convince Eliot to stand down?”

“I didn’t.”

If Hardison had even a sliver of doubt as to how mercilessly hard Eliot had been pushing himself, the thief’s suddenly raised eyebrows would have confirmed it. “He’s been worried about you,” he said carefully, deciding to bring up the subject again. “I know you think he doesn’t want to hear about your ticks, but I think you’re wrong.” Catching Parker’s hand in his, he brought her knuckles to his lips for a soft kiss. “If we really want to make him a part of this, he has a right to know.”

He felt her tense but was relieved when she didn’t pull away. “He’s going to look at me different,” she said, but it was a child’s protest.

“Mama, he won’t,” Hardison said, as gently as he could manage. “He loves you. You know he does. All this is going to do is help him know it too.”

Parker was silent for a long moment. When she spoke, it wasn’t to ask the question Hardison was expecting. “How do we help him know he loves you? You said it yourself when we talked about this a few weeks ago – loving you is more complicated than figuring out he loves me.”

Hardison exhaled softly. _I should have known that conversation would come back and bite me._ He’d been down, admittedly, the night Parker had drawn him out on his own feelings for the hitter, and as a result he’d been more open and frank with his answers than was probably productive or wise. They knew Eliot was bisexual – the problem wasn’t that he might be repulsed by an attraction to a man.

The problem was that he might not be attracted to Hardison in return; a road the hacker had traveled so frequently he was on a first name basis with half the rocks and most of the surrounding foliage. “Parker, I told you to let me worry about that.”

“That’s all you’re doing is worrying about it, though,” Parker complained. “Doesn’t it make more sense to figure out a way to fix it?”  
*****************************  
Lying on his side in the adjacent bed, eyes still closed, Eliot wrestled with whether or not to tell Parker and Hardison he was awake.

 _Love…_ He’d spent so much time arguing with himself that what he felt for them – and it was ‘them’, not one or the other – was familial in nature instead of romantic, that the possibility it might have been the other way around all along had his stomach in knots.

 _”Loving you is more complicated than figuring out he loves me.”_ It wasn’t though, not if Eliot was honest with himself about what he’d been feeling those days Hardison had been missing. He’d tried to explain away his fear as the same thing he would have felt if any of the team had gone missing unexpectedly, then as concern for what Hardison’s disappearance meant to Parker, but neither explanation had rung entirely true in the end.

 _It can’t work._ The same little voice that spoke up every time he got close to something he wanted. That voice that reminded him at heart he was a killer… _damaged goods._

 _”You’re not that man anymore.”_ Damn Sophie and her insight. Parker and Hardison knew what he was. They also knew what he thought he was, and he was pretty sure after all this time _they_ thought he was full of shit.

A finger thumped against his forehead. Reacting instinctively, Eliot lashed out and grabbed Parker’s wrist. Opening his eyes, he glared at the thief. “You think really loudly,” was all she said.

“You’re not the first person to say that,” he grumbled, letting her go and pushing herself to a sitting position. “So,” he huffed, pushing his hair back off his face and looking across at Hardison. “I guess we need to talk?”

The hacker was barely suppressing a grin, and Eliot was suddenly and forcibly reminded of his veiled invitation from earlier. “That’s up to you, man. Just like it’s always been.”

Eliot glanced up at Parker, who shrugged. “We’re just getting a little tired of waiting for you to get out of your own way.” Which, in light of what he’d just heard, Eliot was forced to concede was fair.

“Okay,” he said, focusing on the two of them again. “Let’s talk.”


End file.
